


Us

by KiannaLeigh



Category: My Candy Love
Genre: Best Friends, Don't Judge Me, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Deborah, Shitty Song Writing, Songwriting, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 13:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6958102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiannaLeigh/pseuds/KiannaLeigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a hot afternoon after Deborah's departure, Lysander presents a new song to Castiel. The words on the page quietly reflect the emotions of them both, but neither seems willing to speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Us

It was warm in the courtyard. The day had been usually hot and the students of Sweet Amoris High School were adjusting accordingly. Sweaters and jackets had been abandoned in the lockers or stuffed in book bags. Sleeves were rolled up and buttons undone to limits of school dress code decency.

Even Lysander couldn’t escape the urge to reorganized his wardrobe. He’d shed layers of his normal outfit. The cravat, jacket, and under vest of his outfit was folded neatly and stored in his locker. His shirt was untucked and unbuttoned and the sleeves were rolled up. He noticed that stares, but no one cared that much – least of all Lysander himself. It was hot.

The oppressive air seemed to be the perfect place to bring up Castiel’s ex. Lysander settled near the red-head on the ground under the tree that was Castiel’s territory. Even in the heat, Castiel inched closer and Lysander pressed a shoulder to him.

“I wrote a song,” Lysander mentioned softly.

“About all the bullshit, I bet.”

“Yea. Do you want to see it?”

“Of course. Give it.”

Lysander gingerly flipped through his notebook until he found the page he wanted. In his carful, impossibly tiny cursive his latest brain child lay scrawled across a page. He pressed the binding to open the book to its fullest and passed to it Castiel, who took it and held it as gently as Lysander had.

The book wasn’t fragile, just important to Lysander’s heart.

“I Could Have Loved You,” Castiel read.

"A working title."

“Not exactly what I was expecting.”

Lysander shifted his eyes to Castiel and watched his face. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, only that he was worried.

“What were you expecting?”

“Something angry. I feel like hellfire.”

Lysander thought he should smile, or chuckle. He thought that would be the bet response to put Castiel at ease. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead he frowned.

“I thought something more emotional would be in order.”

“Emotional, huh?” Castiel’s eyes were at the bottom of the page and shifted up and to the side to find Lysander.

They locked eyes for a moment, creating tension. There was no pull or fight, but there was still intensity that refused to be ignored. Lysander knew what he felt and the implications of those feelings, but he wondered, doubted, if Castiel had any clue what the fire behind Lysander’s mismatched eyes were.

Finally, Castiel looked away and returned to the page.

_The perfect world I’d created has been smashed. So what I am I going to do?_

_I wanted to count on something and I so I thought I could count at you_

_Love me, love me_

_That’s all you had to say, I would have given you all of me_

_I loved you, I loved you_

_But it seems that it was all a dream, a nightmare_

_And so I think_

“You really wrote from my point of view?”

“Is that okay? I was trying to get into your head.”

There was a long pause at Castiel processed that statement. He knew that Lysander was introspective, that was part of the man’s nature. But to have to try to get into his head. That was surprisingly intimate. And surprisingly not uncomfortable to think about.

Lysander’s shoulder was pressed against his, their shirts a thin barrier to skin-to-skin contact. It felt good. With Deborah there was this neediness to contact. It was always about getting something out of it. But that was a million miles from where he was with Lysander. Instead, there was a quiet acceptance, a hushed reassurance that Lysander was with him and on his side.

Feeling relaxed in that way, Castiel focused back on the song.

_That I waking up, opening my eyes_

_I’m getting rid of all the toxins you put in me_

_I’m running away, hiding myself, putting some distance between me_

_And the memory that used to be us_

Pretty. Somehow Castiel thought it was pretty, poetic even. Well of course, Lysander had written it, but still even for him there was something magical about the words. Something about the way they framed the action. It was a balance that Castiel envied.

The Castiel that Lysander was playing wasn’t fighting, and that was what Castiel thought he might really do. However, Lysander’s version of him seemed to understand the situation in a way he didn’t.

Before Castiel could read anymore the bell rang.

“Time for class,” Lysander muttered. “We’d best not be late to Mr. Samuel’s class.”

“That guy needs to quit teaching,” Castiel muttered as he handed Lysander’s notebook back to him. “He’s too old to be giving science lectures to high schoolers. He needs to be a retirement community somewhere.”

“I think you might me right. But he comes in every day. Perhaps he’s stronger than he looks. It can be surprising; what people are hiding under the surface.”

As Castiel rose he wondered if that wasn’t a loaded sentence. The quiet around them after Lysander said it seemed to be pregnant with some emotion that refused to be identified.

“Do you think I was stupid for trusting Deborah?” Castiel asked.

Lysander looked at him, his bottomless dual-colored betraying nothing. “I think a bad outcome doesn’t necessarily mean the original decision was flawed. From your perspective, it was only natural to trust her. And to take her word, the world of an old, trusted friend, over the word of a person you’ve know a lesser amount of time is normal. To do otherwise would have been to invite her to ask why she could be so easy thrown away by you. And Deborah would have worked that line for all it was worth. There were really no other options that would have made sense for you take from where you stood.”

“So you think I should just stop thinking about it?”

Turning partially towards the building and frowning heavily Lysander muttered his answer so softly Castiel almost missed it. “I didn’t say that.”

Mr. Samuel’s class was a slow as it ever was. He took time to walk around the class and talk the less confident students through the sections of the experiment. With the teacher so occupied, Castiel asked for Lysander’s notebook. He was watched as Lysander flipped through the pages with his thumb, found the song and firmly pressed the pages open. He placed the book almost between them but a little closer to Castiel and left it there. From his place on the lab stool Castiel could read the words easily but still switch his eyes to his work.

_The memory I’d cherished had been lost, now what am I going to do?_

_Can I count on anything in this world since I couldn’t count on you?_

_Kiss me, kiss me_

_Just one more time; You could have had all of me_

_I hate you, I hate you_

_It’s all the same and I’m the one to blame_

_And so I think_

Mr. Samuel said something loud enough to pull the attention of the class. But while watched the movement that would go into the next steps of the experiment, Castiel was thinking of the song.

Lysander knew him even better than he thought. The lyricist’s version of him was as angry as he was. The fact that Lysander, ever the calm one, could understand the raw feeling he had was a testament to how close they were.

Or maybe it was that Lysander felt things so much more like Castiel did than he let on. Maybe he had a person whose betrayal would or had led to him questioning having faith in anyone. Someone he trusted his whole heart with, so it was as much a part of his partner as it was of him.

As the room dissolved back into partners of two working through the experiment, Castiel brought his eyes back to the notebook.

_Don’t be surprised, please don’t fake shocked_

_You had to know that it’d turn out this way_

_You let me go and I not I know_

_A bitch like you was never worth my time_

_And so I_

“Castiel?”

_I’ve woken up now, opened my eyes_

_I got rid of all the toxins you put in me_

_I ran away and hid myself_

_I put some distance between me and the memory that never was us_

“Castiel?!” Lysander urgent whisper coincided with Castiel’s eyes slipping off the last line on the page.

“Yea?” Castiel responded distantly.

“We have to finish this part. My Samuel will be here any minute.”

“Okay. Do you remember what to do?”

“My memory’s not that bad,” he chuckled. “Follow my lead. We’ll finish in no time.”

Reaching for the next chemical for them to work with, Lysander noticed something in Castiel’s eyes.

“Is something wrong?” Lysander asked.

Castiel frowned. He looked frustrated. “Lys,” he said softy. “When you wrote the song was it just about what happened with Deborah?”

“It’s not a news report,” Lysander responded in an unusually flippant way.  He glanced at Castiel and found him frowning heavily. It was the face he made when he getting sick of someone’s shit. “I started writing the song in response to what happened to you,” Lysander went on in a softer tone. “But I was writing a story.”

Mixing the chemicals and watching the reaction, Lysander wondered exactly what his friend was thinking. Castiel silently took notes in his science notebooks and Lysander put away his precious private notebook, but his bag with the notebook in it was on the floor between them an every so often he caught Castiel glancing in its direction.

They finished the experiment, took their notes and cleaned up. As Mr. Samuel dismissed them, Castiel spoke.

“Have you got a Deborah of your own?”

“Thank god, no,” Lysander responded. "I was thinking in a hopeful way when I wrote the song. Distancing oneself from the toxic so that one can see the good.”

Castiel nodded. He seemed calm and almost introspective. “Well. You’re the best good I’ve got at the moment. Not that it’s something I can complain about. And if I couldn’t trust Deborah, I can defiantly trust you.”

“It might be dangerous to draw parallels between Deborah and me.”

“I think that's the least dangerous thing I’ve ever done.”

Lysander slipped through the doorway at the same as Castiel and felt the heat of his skin as they brushed against one another. He was turning the other’s words over in his head but warning himself not to read too much into it.

“Hey, classes are over.” Castiel’s smile was larger than normal as he said that. "Let’s go get something cold to drink.”

The warm vice of Castiel’s hand wound around Lysander’s wrist and then he was being pulled down the hallway towards the front of the school. They didn’t stop for anyone or invite anyone to follow. It was just the two of them.

Though he told himself nothing good could come from it, Lysander couldn’t help but think of them as an item, an ‘us’.


End file.
